Archive for October, 2011
An Affordable Shortcut to Designing Your Dream Home
You have likely been making mental notes for years. Every book or magazine that you read and each home that you visit has become a source for pieces to the puzzle that can become your new home. You don’t know a thing about architecture, designing or drafting but that shouldn’t stop you from taking the dream house that you have pictured in your head and making it a reality.
There are two ways that you can approach the creation of new house plans from which a builder can work:
1. Hire an architect
2. Make alterations to an existing house plan
There are many benefits to working directly with an architect. You will be able to sit down with an experienced designer and review, very specifically, all of the ideas and requirements for the home that you have in mind. The architect can give suggestions and help you to avoid problems that you may not have anticipated. However, be prepared to pay handsomely for this service. A good architect does not come cheap.
An economical compromise is to modify existing new house plans. There are hundreds of publications and websites that specialize in developing house plans that are available for purchase. These packaged plans are designed by professional architects and are available in a variety of styles, sizes and price-ranges. In many cases, you can visit a website and enter the various criteria for the home that you desire and an internal search engine will match your specs with plans in inventory. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: housing affordable, the better homes fundRelated posts
Affordable Apartments for Rent in the Salt Lake Valley
Often the first thing one does when searching for a home to rent is assess their income. For many Utahans with large families, liabilities or low wages, this can seemingly be a discouraging task. Utah’s economy is increasing and therefore the population is swelling right along with it. This progress is in turn nudging, or rather, shoving the cost of renting an apartment in Utah to levels that are surpassing previous years. Over the past four years, [Utah] has seen the cost of housing, both rental and owner-occupied, rise more that 50 percent and rental vacancy rates drop to 4 percent or less.
As daunting as this may seem, there are countless options for those who simply cannot afford these high rental rates. Realizing that this high cost of living drives away many important, but sadly underpaid community members such as school teachers, factory workers, small business owners and police officers, Utah’s legislature has passed the Utah’s Moderate Income Housing Law. This law requires communities to design individual strategies so that their low and moderate income inhabitants are encouraged to remain in the area. One of the programs that evolved with this process is the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, also known as Section 42 of the Internal Revenue Code.
The tax credit program is quite literally the shining star of the Moderate Income Housing Law. This is because the LIHTC program was created as an incentive for investors and builders to construct or remodel buildings specifically for the low to moderate income population. Because the program provides credits to be used against sizeable tax liabilities, many large and successful corporations are taking part in the tax credit program, building beautiful, and often luxury apartment communities that are desirable to many and affordable for even more. While ‘low income’ or ‘affordable’ housing was once met with opposition from developers and communities alike, affordable apartments both in urban and rural areas are showing up all over the state. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: low income housing, the better homes fundRelated posts
Top Home Improvement Things to Do Before You Sell Your House
Selling your house gives you a list of things to do: pack up your belongings, forward your mail, vow to your kitchen sink that you’ll never forget it. While all these things are important – you don’t want your kitchen sink’s hopes going down the drain – the importance of home improvement weighs heavier. After all, before you can leave your house you might need to sell it, and before you can do that, you might need to improve it. The following is a list of the most important things to do before placing your house on the market.
Get a Paint Job: Few things make a house look worse than chipped paint. Whether it’s on the exterior of the house or behind a bedroom door where you think no one will notice, chipped paint is a quick way to find yourself chipping down the asking price. Instead of presenting a house that looks neglected, leaving potential buyers to think that old paint is just the beginning, buy a few buckets, take a few days, and paint whatever in your house needs to be painted. If your house doesn’t need an entirely new paint job, then simply touch up the areas that need some tender loving care.
Remember the Small Things: We often overlook the small things in favor of looking at the bigger picture, but it’s the small things that make up the bigger picture. Not only is it amazing how much an attention to small details can improve the appeal of your house dramatically, but it’s also amazing how affordable this kind of improvement can be. From something as simple as buying a new shower curtain to redoing the mail box, from planting flowers in the front yard to putting new drapes in the living room, the small changes you make can help make the entire home look detailed in more than one way. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: housing affordable, the better homes fund